Pre-Collision Braking Almost Killed Me Today

I question this part.
Isn't the car that does the 'rear ending' always at fault?
You don't run into a car that is ahead of you, period.
(I'm talking to you, tailgaters....)

I don't know what various state laws are like concerning this.
OP, please keep us posted.

 

I hate these ethical "dilemmas" when it comes to new technology in cars. Neither the car nor Toyota nor Congress is "deciding" to kill you. It's all about risk. They are trying to reduce the risk of accidents caused by human error, which accounts for about 95% of car crashes. As a side effect there is now an increased chance of machine error. But the chance of machine error should be much smaller than the chance of human error before these systems are allowed to be on the road.

Any time there's talk of autonomous cars, some people debate whether autonomous cars should be programmed to "decide" to crash into a school bus or sacrifice the driver. But it won't decide, it will just take pre-programmed actions to avoid an accident as much as possible. Which is probably just slamming on the brakes faster than an human could react.

While suddenly stopping can cause an accident, it won't always. It's the safest pre-programmed action. Crashing into something in front of you (when it's not a false alarm of course) is guaranteed to cause an accident.

Obviously human drivers usually have better situational awareness than the current level of driver assist technology. But you can't ignore all the times that humans become distracted or tired, and our slow reaction time.


Toyota supposedly has the ability to get data from the car after events like this. I think there is a line in the manual that says they can get video from the camera in the event of an accident. You should push for them to get this data, and whether you are allowed to review it or not hopefully they can figure out the cause of the false alarm and prevent it from happening on future models.

 

If mandated, the car behind the car that brakes on false activation will also have pre-collision braking.

 

Interesting article showing videos of common automatic emergency braking false positive events
It seems metal plates on the road or overhead signs are common false triggers.

 

This is a scary topic. I am seriously thinking about turning off my 2017 Prime's collision avoidance. I drive 130/day on mostly highways so if this kicks in on my commute, I may be killed.

 

But that's not the scenario here. Supposed the OP had manually applied the brakes because a pedestrian really did step out in front of him and then got rear-ended. The driver of the following car would have been held responsible for following too close, right? Seems to me if a car in a line of traffic brakes, whether the driver or the system does the braking, the following cars are responsible for having enough space/time to respond by also braking.

 

If you are asking about the "black box" in the car, I don't think even a dealer has access to it.

 

Anyone else thinks OP is bullshitting us?

 

As you know, there are a lot of talented people on this site. The fact I have not yet read anyone cracking the code to retrieve camera data and/or any other driving record such as braking record from the car make me think it's not accessible by any owner of the car. But I maybe wrong.

 

It looks like there is a bend ahead of you. Do you remember cars heading the opposite direction from that bend towards you? If so, that might have triggered it. Just a guess.

 

These are reasons why I have a dash cam.

Here's a page from the manual about data recording:

 

The second post in the "related thread" the forum suggests has a page from the manual with many situations where they say you should disable PCS.
Just to be clear with PCS (Disabling) | PriusChat

They do admit that in situations where it doesn't operate properly it could possibly lead to an accident leading to death or serious injury.